It was 11am in Gatwick airport on Saturday 14th March. The plane taking a small drinks press contingent over to Ireland for Jameson's extended #HelloDublin St. Patrick's Day celebrations was due to leave in just over an hour from Heathrow. Had I made a terrible mistake?

In fact, I'd just arrived back from a holiday and had always known I couldn't make that flight, just as I now knew all I'd be seeing of blighty was Gatwick airport itself. My flight to Cork was later, and until then I'd simply be pretending I was Tom Hanks in The Terminal. (Although there were no Catherine Zeta-Jones love interest developments to speak of.)

Right then Ladies and Gentlemen - it's time for another #MasterofCocktails. Excited? Oh yes.

This week we're making a Chartreuse-heavy 'Bijou Cocktail' recipe, though we're making it with slightly less Green Chartreuse as to not overwhelm the drink.

'Bijou' of course, is French for 'Jewel', and the cocktail's name comes from the colours of precious jewels (emerald, diamond and ruby) being similar to the colour of the ingredients (Chartreuse, Gin and Vermouth).

Yesterday saw the winners of the 2015 World Drinks Awards announced, as well as the winners of Whisky Magazine's Icons of Whisky and World Whiskies Awards - a very busy rotation of the Earth! It was also a fantastic day for many of the brands we work with / own / represent as you'll see from the veritable cornucopia of trophies and awards below.

Drink by the Dram have also produced a selection of Winners Tasting Sets, which you can find here.

Fancy getting your grubby mitts/filthy paws/noodly appendages on some free whisk(e)y? Then you're in for a treat, as we're running a competition which could bag you a bottle of spectacular whisk(e)y in just a few clicks of your mouse!

Alright, here's the 4-1-1, folks. Every day of our #BagThisBottle campaign, we'll be giving away a different bottle to a different lucky winner on Twitter. To be in with a chance to win, you'll need to...

"Are you a sponge or a stone? Do you like to experience all facets of life, or do you shut yourself off from new experience?"

With whisky distilleries opening right around the world, you must quite reasonably ask yourself questions such as this. We live in an age where a wide variety of excellent whiskies are being made outside of the traditional and well-established whisky producing counties, and if you're not open to them, you're missing out. In England, for example, the latest whisky distillery to come on stream is The Lakes Distillery near Cockermouth.

Well greetings one and all. Time for another round of #MasterofCocktails methinks. Oh yes.

This week we're making a super-delicious Japanese-y sort of tea-based gin sour sort of affair. Trust me - it's yummers. It's called The Jinger Ninja, a name which should make sense as we go through the recipe.

We're using a pretty decent grade of Matcha for this drink. That's important, as although we do want *some* bitterness, we don't want it overpowering. I prefer the sweet, grassy tones given by something like this...

A little while back I received a sample of Nàdurra First Fill Selection only to get all full of horrible cold when the time came to taste it. Hmph. After recovering from this particular malady, I then promptly succumbed to some kind of debilitating manflu straight away! (But that's another story, with another untasted sample staring at me throughout, goading me to get better. Or at least recover the sense of smell...)

Fortunately, between these two bouts of sub-optimum health (during which I was ejected from MoM towers as they rightly feared I'd infect the populous) I did at least manage to find some time to try this new Glenlivet! It's also now in stock and available to buy, so it seems like a good time to pop some thoughts on the ol' blog.

If you take a glance up at the sky, you might notice that the rolling blanket of grey clouds that we’ve become acquainted with for the past 6 months is sometimes briefly replaced with a flaming ball of hot plasma. That fact that we can catch a glimpse of it means the cosmic grip of winter is waning and spring is on its way to thaw us out.

This also means that St. Patrick’s Day is almost upon us! To celebrate the Feast of Saint Patrick (and the fact that the Sun hasn't left us and ran off with some other planet like COROT-7b), we’re running a little competition which could result in you getting your hands on some fabulous Irish whiskey!